The impact of stress on our identity

by with No Comment Self-awareness

In 2019, the World Health Organization reported that one in five people experiencing conflict or crisis will have depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. It is very likely that these statistics increase throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Pastors are experiencing a great amount of stress and exhaustion, and some of them are even leaving the ministry. Pastoral identity is part of the problem.

What statistics show about the stress in pastors

The struggle to clarify one’s identity creates stress that has very real consequences for the pastors’ health and the churches they serve. For example:

  • 75% of pastors report being “extremely stressed” or “very stressed” (1)
  • 90% of them work between 55 and 75 hours per week (2)
  • 90% feel fatigued and exhausted every week (1)
  • 70% say they are underpaid (2)
  • 40% report having a serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month (1)
  • 91% have experienced some kind of burnout in their ministry and 18% say they are “fried right now” (7)

According to the Mayo Clinic, job burnout is a special type of work-related stress, a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced achievement and loss of personal identity.

Burnout, a special type of work-related stress

This burnout occurs when the results you get do not meet your expectations for an extended period of time. If you think burnout is a sign of weakness, think again. The symptoms of fatigue, being overwhelmed, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, sadness, and depression are simply the fire alarms. They activate in your body to tell you to turn them off before you burn. To understand this problem, it is necessary to understand how stress works.

Stress is the body’s way of dealing with events that change or threaten to change the world around us.

Robert M. Sapolsky, in his book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” describes it like this: “A stressor is anything in the outside world that hits and affects homeostatic balance, and the response to that stress is what the body does in order to restore homeostasis”[1].

Sapolsky uses the example of a zebra on the African plains. If the zebra thinks it hears, sees, or smells a lion, a stress response is triggered, sending it into fight or flight mode.

The first thing the zebra’s body does is mobilize the bodily functions it needs in order to survive. This happens when the hypothalamus in the brain sends chemicals through the body to respond to the stressor, and hormones are released into the bloodstream.

Blood pressure increases so that if the zebra has to run, the body is ready. The body’s energy reserves are opened, so the zebra can keep running. At the same time, there is an “additional storage inhibition” of new energy. In other words, the body stops doing anything that uses a lot of energy so that all energy is available to escape.

The same process takes place when a pastor feels stress

This may be due to having a lot of work, conflicts with a leader, a situation that he does not know how to handle, or a broken family relationship. But the interesting thing about all this is that the pastor’s brain makes no distinction between the false factors that produce stress or the real ones, like the lions that will eat the zebra.

People can feel stress by two types of lions: external and internal. External stressors are things that are out of the person’s control. These include: a new job, health problems, pain, tense relationships, uncertainty about the future, a person harassing or attacking them, or even, of course, real lions. It can also include another person’s stress because humans, like zebras, pick up on and react to the stress of others.

Internal stressors, on the other hand, come from within the person’s thoughts or actions. These could include destructive personality traits, undisciplined thoughts and concerns, suspicions, unhealthy eating and exercise habits, the inability to say “no,” a need to make other people like you, or perfectionism.

Stress and exhaustion

If stress is hyper-attention and a response to stressors in a person’s life, then exhaustion is the opposite effect. Exhaustion is when the body and mind can no longer respond to stressors. A person’s emotions and stress responses turns off. Exhaustion is often described in the literature because of its differences compared to stress.

Researcher Anne Jackson compares both in several ways. If stress is being overly committed, then exhaustion is disconnection.

Stress affects physical energy, while exhaustion affects motivation and drive.[2]

Stress produces a loss of fuel and energy, while exhaustion produces a loss of ideals and hope.

It is this exhaustion that leads the pastor to develop an identity crisis. In this crisis, his identity breaks and his heart wounds until he loses all of his strength. It is this exhaustion that leads you to an existential void and to wonder if it is worth it to keep fighting or to throw in the towel.

Furthermore, it is this exhaustion that leads you to disconnect emotionally from your wife or children and eventually lose them. It leads you to use pornography, to commit adultery, and it leads you to lack of motivation and loss of interest. Physical exhaustion produces an identity crisis in the pastor, resulting in a broken identity.

Symptoms of a broken identity

If you suffer from a broken identity, you might:

  • Feel distracted and unmotivated
  • Experience a feeling of disorientation and lack of direction.
  • Develop a negative perspective of yourself, the world, and your future.
  • Feel anguish over not knowing what your vital purpose is.
  • Have a general feeling of dissatisfaction, regardless of how things are going in your life.
  • Find it difficult to make decisions because you do not know what you really want.
  • Feel instability or emotional exhaustion, as though you do not know what you want.
  • Fear the future because you cannot see it clearly.
  • Feel unable to face changes that are occurring in your life.

If you have these symptoms, it is time for you to stop for a bit and perhaps seek professional help. If you need to talk to a professional in these areas, you can call 407 618 0212

[1] Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress- Related Diseases, and Coping (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004), 6. Italics in original.

[2] Anne Jackson, Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 95.

 

The cure for anxiety in the COVID-19 crisis

by with No Comment Emotional Intelligence

How do you manage your anxiety?

One day, John Wesley was walking with a man who was very anxious about all the problems he was experiencing and expressed his doubts about the goodness of God. He said, “I don’t know what I am going to do with all these worries that cause me so much anxiety.”

While walking, Wesley saw a cow peering over a stone wall. “Do you know why that cow is looking over the wall?” Wesley asked.

“No,” said the man who was concerned.

Wesley said: “The cow is looking over the wall because she cannot see through it. That is what you should do with your wall of problems that fills you with anxiety: look over the wall and avoid it.”

The cure for anxiety

Faith allows us to look beyond our circumstances and focus on Christ. In this post, I want to continue developing on the topic of anxiety amid the pandemic. The question I intend to answer today is this: is there a cure for anxiety?

Many times, when I see patients who have anxiety disorders, I ask them: what is your goal when coming to therapy? They answer: “I want to eliminate my anxiety, I cannot bear it.” My answer is: “We cannot do that.” Seeing the look of disbelief they give me when I give them that answer is interesting.

Then, I try to explain to them that we cannot eliminate anxiety because it is a natural reaction to the stress we are facing in life. Anxiety is a part of our internal defense system. It protects us from danger. God created us with the ability to experience anxiety and the rest of the positive and negative emotions so that we can navigate this world.

Fear promotes a cascade of nervous and hormonal mechanisms that prepare the body to escape or fight. Those anxiety symptoms you experience result from the activation of your automatic nervous system, which is included in a part of the brain that is in charge of secreting adrenaline when you experience any kind of threat. Adrenaline allows your body to be ready to respond when facing danger, in case you need to act before the threat.

COVID-19 pandemic and anxiety

As a result of this adrenaline secretion, you experience increased heart rate and breathing, as well as muscle tension, making your body ready to answer before the danger. When there is no apparent threat, these changes are often experienced as agitation or anxiety. That is why, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it is normal for our automatic nervous system to be activated. And this causes adrenaline secretion because you feel threatened.

Your brain normally tries to make sense of what you are experiencing in your daily life. However, if you do not take control of this process, and instead of acting, you let your brain reach its own conclusions, you can develop irrational fears before any kind of crisis.

I will try to illustrate this idea this way: If a baby is startled, let’s say by a loud noise while playing with his favorite toy, what do you think his natural reaction is going to be? Crying. However, crying, itself, can be stressful for the baby, reinforcing the fear he/she is experiencing. Not understanding that fear is just a reaction to the loud noise the toy makes, the baby gets to relate the fear he/she feels to the toy and ends up developing a fear of the toy that produces the noise.

What happens inside you?

The same goes for your anxiety amid the COVID-19 crisis. You are startled by the fear of contracting the coronavirus. Your natural reaction is to experience fear, to be afraid, and to feel anxious in the face of danger. But this anxiety and despair you experience, at the same time, reinforces your fear of COVID-19. You end up associating your fear with the pandemic without looking at the triggers that lead you to experience anxiety.

In the previous post, we started to see anxiety as a messenger that should not be eliminated. Emotions exist to give us information about our experiences and about what matters in our lives. Sadly, many people with anxiety try to ignore their emotions because some of them are unpleasant and even painful. However, the Bible gives us a more effective strategy and tells us in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God.”

What Paul is telling you is not to try to fight the messenger, your anxiety. Accept it and tolerate it because the message it wants to give you is more important than the temporary discontent you might experience. Instead of grieving over your anxiety, focus on trusting God and placing your concern in prayer before Him.

Even when you do not know the emotional triggers that lead you to experience anxiety, just trying to tolerate and manage anxiety symptoms will help you process the experience you are dealing with more effectively. Paul ends by saying in Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (DHH)

Three strategies to manage your anxiety

We can compare anxiety with trying to tolerate chronic pain. The more you demand that you get rid of chronic pain, the more it will frustrate, irritate you, and intensify. However, when you accept pain as irritating, but not as something to get rid of, its control tends to decrease and even the intensity of the pain itself may decrease or become less noticeable.

The same goes for anxiety. Demanding that anxiety be removed only makes it less tolerable. It becomes a bigger presence in your life and all your focus is poured into your anxiety. The more you focus on it, the more power it has in your life. So, the advice is “do not worry about anything.”

Stop avoiding it

A conscious approach to managing anxiety is learning to “let it be.” You do not have to get rid of it. When anxiety demands your attention, you can refocus, very gently, on your current activity and place your concerns in God’s hands. The apostle Peter presents it this way: Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you in due time, 7 cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. (1 Pe. 5:6-7)

Schedule your concerns

If the first strategy does not work, maybe you could try this second strategy to manage your anxiety. When your mind is racing and anxious, you feel overwhelmed. And you cannot seem to focus, find a time to be in silence. Set an alarm that goes off in 15 minutes, and then write everything that troubles you in your emotional journal.

Specifically, during this COVID-19 crisis, try to set aside a specific amount of time each day to record your concerns in an emotional journal. Simply having this time each day can help you control your concerns. You know that you will have time to pay attention to your concerns without turning them into an intolerable burden.

Create your anxiety box

Find a shoebox and cut a hole in the top. Decorate it as you want and keep it in a practical place. Then, when Satan starts pushing you to worry, write down your concern. Glorify God and pray, saying:

“Lord, this is what worries me. But you told me not to worry. So, I am going to put this concern inside my box, admitting that I cannot handle it. This means that it is for You to handle, and I trust You to take care of it.”

With this exercise, I am not telling you that all your problems will disappear if you put them in an anxiety box. But when you learn to replace concern with prayer and faith instead, things will be better. God will open an umbrella covering you in the middle of the storm to prevent you from getting wet. And He will give you peace that is beyond all understanding.

Faith allows us to look beyond our circumstances and focus on Christ. Today is your day to start walking like a giant in Christ, Jesus. You have problems and difficulties. We all have them. We know what you are going through in the middle of this pandemic. But together we can learn how to manage our anxiety and have the Peace that Jesus promises. A peace that passes all understanding. I would like you to write to me and tell me how God is helping you to manage your anxiety. And if you are using a different exercise than the ones I present here, let me know

How to manage your anxiety in the pandemic

by with No Comment Emotional IntelligenceSpiritual growth
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Let see the importance to manage your anxiety. One morning, Death was walking towards a city and a man asked:

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to kill 100 people,” Death replied.

“That is horrible!” the man said.

“That’s the way it is,” said Death. “That is what I do.”

The man hurried to warn everyone he could about Death’s plan.

As evening fell, he met Death again.

“You told me you were going to take 100 people with you,” the man said. “Why did 1,000 die?”

“I kept my word,” Death replied. “I only killed 100 people. Anxiety killed the other 900.”

The pandemic we face today has led some people to develop a state of anxiety, which can be very dangerous for their physical, spiritual, and emotional health.

Anxiety is the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 40 million adults, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. This is equivalent to 18 percent of the population of this country. But, the saddest part of this matter is that only a third of those who struggle with anxiety receive treatment. In our next posts, I want to talk to you about this topic, which is very important at the moment we are currently living in.

You must manage your anxiety

In our last blog, we began to study Jesus’ experience with His disciples when He gave them the order to cross to the other shore and a great storm arose (Mark 4: 35-40). The disciples thought they were going to perish and called their Master, saying: Master, aren’t you worried that we are going to perish? But, we see a Jesus who was sleeping in the middle of the storm while His disciples were anxious because they feared being swallowed by the dark waves of the storm. Jesus was calm because His Heavenly Father was in control of everything.

Is it a sin to have anxiety? Did Jesus’ disciples sin by being anxious in the midst of the storm? It is a very complex question. Let’s try to figure it out by asking ourselves what anxiety is.

Anxiety is part of the human body’s natural response system to any true or false threat we experience. When your mind perceives that it is in danger, it sends a series of signals to your body and as a result, there is a response to that stress.

Stress is the response to an external threat when you experience a crisis, a task you have to finish, or the threat of an uncertain future. Anxiety is the reaction to the stress you are experiencing. It has an internal origin.

Manage your anxiety is not always necessary

Low levels of anxiety manifested by the body are normally found at one end of the spectrum and can present themselves as low levels of fear, apprehension, mild sensations of muscle pressure, sweating, shortness of breath, or perhaps doubt about the ability to complete a task. These symptoms of normal anxiety levels do not interfere with your daily functioning.

On the contrary, these normal levels of anxiety help us to function more effectively since they produce greater motivation and attention to the stress we have in advance. Experts like Jennifer Fee draw their attention to seeing anxiety as a messenger. She says anxiety is that messenger that tells you what is important to you. Try to communicate with your needs, so that you can meet them correctly. If you kill the messenger, you will not receive the message.

When you don’t see anxiety as a messenger, it can reach clinical levels. Clinical or destructive levels of anxiety are at the other end of the spectrum, and they increase enough to rapidly decrease your performance and cause a physical and emotional decline. Anxiety disorders are characterized by a severe and persistent worry that is disproportional to the situation being experienced.

These symptoms cause anguish, they affect your daily functioning, and they occur for a significant period of time. In our next post, we will continue talking about this important topic. Come back! Please share your comment about how you manage your anxiety, and feel free to ask any questions.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]